“His name will not disappear”
I have acquired Ruth the Moabitess, Mahlon's widow, as my wife, to raise up the name of the deceased through his inheritance, so that his name will not disappear from among his brothers or from the gate of his home. (Ruth 4:10 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Flowery legal language about preserving a dead man's name.
The cultural key
In ancient Israel a person lived on through descendants who kept his name attached to his ancestral land. To die childless was to have your name 'cut off' (Hebrew karat), rendered here 'disappear': your line and your claim on the family inheritance erased, which was felt as a real calamity. Levirate marriage existed to prevent exactly this: the next of kin married the widow, and her first son counted as the dead man's heir, keeping his name and land alive (Deuteronomy 25:5–6). This is why the nearer redeemer had backed out; the child would build another man's estate, not his own.
Recovered meaning
Boaz frames his marriage not as acquiring a wife but as an act of resurrection-by-lineage: keeping a dead man's name from vanishing. In a book about emptiness and loss, redemption means a name that refuses to disappear.